The video game is being developed for the personal computer platform and, at this time will not be available for PS3 or Xbox 360.

The game is also a teaser (of sorts) of more things to come; the game (which will be released at the same time as the film) will feature three different levels (1. The town of Devonshire (a downtown city map), 2. The Backwoods (a wooded area just outside of the city) and 3. Camp Wormwood (a militia camp based on the old Brookfield AFS radar station in Brookfield, Ohio). After the release, the teams will continue to work on expanding the levels and storyline for a future full feature release.

The game is a First Person Shooter but also will have a twist of Adventure/RPG thrown into the mix. It will offer both a first person shooter and third person shooter camera availability (to choose at the players discretion).

The initial release will feature a decent sized arsenal of weaponry (including pistols, rifles, smgs, shotguns, explosives and riot shields) and decent sized maps; the full feature release plans on expanding the existing arsenal (featuring loads of weapons, explosives and ammunition), offering even larger open world maps (with nearly all of the buildings being open to exploration), drivable vehicles and other (friendly and non-friendly) groups of survivors.

To keep up to date with the project’s development and progress, I do suggest that you check out and like the Facebook page.

Games…Thousands of people are addicted to them, millions love them and there are hundreds of titles released every year; but what if you are one of those people who are driven to make one? Hopefully, we can shed some light on that very subject.

Commercial or not?

We really suggest that you get ahold of an engine (for non-commercial use) and start learning the program. As always, the question that keeps coming up is “where do I get one and which one do I get”? Everybody has their own opinion, but I will lay this out (in referring to the “active three”) in the most logical sense.

If you are completely new to the idea of creating your own game, I would honestly suggest going with Unity 3d; (I am sure there are more engines out there (like the Blender GE), but we are not familiar with them). The reason I say this is mainly due to the fact that it will directly take .FBX files, the user profile isn’t too horrible and it uses JavaScript and C# scripting (compared to Uscript (Unrealscript) or C++/LUA (CryEngine). Once you get use to creating assets, programming and flow charts you can jump into either the CryEngine or Unreal.

All three of these engines are free for non-commercial use (and I believe) they are available for pc and Mac. Downside is (and keep in mind) you may only be able to produce games for PC or Mac. Typically PS3, 360 and Wii based games require a commercial license.

3d Model Info

Another thing to keep in mind is the sizes and complexity of your models. Large models with a ton of polygons can slow engines down to a crawl. You will have to either perform a reduction, clearEdges, shrink wrapping or (preferably) just create low poly models.

Most of the time, you’ll have to keep in mind, engines will perform their own tessellation on models. So, for example, let’s say that you have a model that has 9,000 polys; you perform a clearEdges function in Maya and manage to drop the poly count down to around 1,000 polys; after taking it into your engine, don’t be surprised if it actually counts upwards of 3,000 polys or more inside the engine.

Graphics and add ons

Although I cannot say a lot about Unreal’s UDK; I have heard a lot about the comparable graphics between UDK and CryEngine. Now I will say as far as Unity 3d, it’s graphics are not the greatest.

With the UDK and Unity (I believe) you will have to download either Havok, Physx or Apex for physics mods (such as ragdoll, destructible models and heavy clothing effects.

CryEngine does have imbedded physics but Apex is a good download to get. So is the Nvidia DDS plugin for Photoshop; CryEngine does use its own Tif plugin that comes with the UDK download.

Although, as far as I know, Apex cannot be directly imported into CryEngine (at this time) and I am not sure about the other easily available engines; but I personally feel that it is a program that should be obtained and experimented with.

For those who are interested in possible (time saving techniques), you can research Autodesk’s 123d Catch which is a ’emulated’ 3d scanner. It basically uses Autodesk’s Cloud to create 3d models based on several (strategically shot) reference photos. Although I wouldn’t suggest using this method in order to substitute ‘hands on’ modeling creation, you can use it for instances that may be beyond certain capabilities (such as accurate (or true to scale) objects such as weapons, contoured pieces or possibly even faces of people). Please keep in mind though, this is definitely not a platform for motion capture, only for model creation.

As far motion capture platforms (or mocap), that will have to be a discussion for another posting since we have yet to dabble in that field.

Output

As far as “non-commercial” output from engines such as CryEngine and Unity; once you have your game finished, you will be looking to output your game to others. I mean that’s the whole point right? With your non-commercial game, in order for others to play them, they would also need to either download the game’s SDK package or plugins. For those out there that wish to output an executable package (just like the games that we buy from the store or online), you have to get into a form of commercial tier. Unity’s output is a bit different because it only requires plugins, but is fairly cheap for their pro engine (about $300). Other engines such as Unreal and CryEngine may have a price tag that looks extremely frightening to the independent artists out there, but there may be a much more enlightening option for those artists in near future.

At the time this is being written, I am unsure if the other engines and their respective companies offer a tier or platform such as this.

Moreover

Game development is a very time consuming and tedious task and you will have to keep this in mind and think about this before seriously attempting to take it on. Although it can be taken on by one person, it is honestly not suggested. Get out there and collaborate with others; come up with an interesting concept and branch from there. You’ll want to keep track of (and notes) on everything…no matter how small it seems. Our new project for example is still in the pre-production phase; we have our script & story line laid out, our “bible” being compiled and some of our assets being created. Just a small chunk out of the long road ahead.

We have decided to take on this project because we were somewhat displeased on what we have seen in The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct.

The game will be an action role-playing, open world video game with an interactive variable storyline; where the player has to make certain decisions and those decisions reflect different outcomes (similar to Fallout 3/New Vegas).

We will be releasing this as an internet release ‘fan game’ and (unless it was picked up by a game development company) will be free for download. Being this, we are looking for volunteers for this project and volunteers will get credit but not monetary compensation. Since there is a possibility (even though it may be slight) that the game concept could get picked up by a separate game development company, all volunteers will be contracted to make sure that if any moneys are paid for the intellectual property/creative copyright, all volunteers will be compensated.

The design and development will be through FTP transfers and video conferencing (aka working from home). If anyone is interested in helping us with this project, fill out the form below.